Ian Paisley dies aged 88

[big mervyn]

Go to 19:48

Pure gold

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04gck2s

[Kofi Annan]

Kofi,
Much as I don't wish to intrude on the sense of loss and grief over the passing away of the Big Man, your points about Mandela are simply preposterous. You describe him as a convicted terrorist. Perhaps he was in a literal sense in the warped mind of the apartheid regime, but his contribution to peaceful change and reconciliation over decades was remarkable, unprecedented and an example to everyone.

Much as I admire what the Rev Ian did in recent years, I am old enough to have childhood memories of every moderate Unionist leader being undermined and knocked down by the good Reverend to the point where he achieved his objective and was finally top of the pile.
That took him about 40 years. (It is ironic that the Shinners mirrored the same path. There never was any justification for the armed struggle either)

I will remember the benign Paisley and his chuckles but I can't forget the awful stuff you had to live through and which even at a remove of 100 miles I also had to endure for much of my life.

don't be so fecking patronising,

[Jackie Brown]

As Malcolm Tucker would say, a c**gatland

[BuckRogers]

A divisive figure and one who in my youth caused me to wonder how he could, in any way, be considered a man of god. His sectarian rantings seemed to be diametrically opposite to the teachings of what i understood Christianity to be.

He was a rabble rouser who undermined many moderate unionist leaders who tried, and failed, to end the killing.

It's hard to know if there could ever have been peace without the extremists associated and aligned to DUP/Sinn Fein IRA on board but there might have been an Paisley was as big a political barrier to peace as the IRA were with their violence and destruction.

As to his twilight years he certainly became an enabler. How much of this was down to a personal lust for power and how much down to a changing political landscape and support is hard to be entirely sure.

He certainly played a more positive role in the latter years but he was a huge obstacle prior to that.

His family has my sympathy, beyond that I am largely nonplussed.

[Jackie Brown]

A disgusting, cowardly biggot(sic) who fanned the flames of sectarianism and hatred through the darkest days of our history. He fueled loyalist stars with rhetoric and justified their behaviour with his hate speech. Then when he had destroyed Trimble and the UUP after the Good Friday agreement he saw the opportunity to seize the top position. He was only ever interested in power and control either of his own church, his own party or his own statelet.

Worm food is too good for him, we are still reaping what he sowed. bar steward.

[rorybestsbigbaldnoggin]

Gobshite in life, gobshite in death.

[big mervyn]

A disgusting, cowardly biggot(sic) who fanned the flames of sectarianism and hatred through the darkest days of our history. He fueled loyalist stars with rhetoric and justified their behaviour with his hate speech. Then when he had destroyed Trimble and the UUP after the Good Friday agreement he saw the opportunity to seize the top position. He was only ever interested in power and control either of his own church, his own party or his own statelet.

Worm food is too good for him, we are still reaping what he sowed. bar steward.

On a slightly more positive note ... his pyjamas were lovely ...

[BaggyTrousers]

Frankly I'd prefer to remember Nevin Spence and family today.

Actually to add to that, it's not for me to tell anyone who is and who isn't worth mourning. We all have relationships we value, we all know that most if not all of our friends and family are not perfect. That matters not a jot if they are lost to us.

I had two childhood friends who didn't make it out if their twenties, one who happened to be the first person out of mass that Sunday night a second because he rebelled against his father's political views and ended up as a prod in the INLA of all things and was murdered by colleagues.

The innocent and the guilty you might think, but each were simply friends to me.

I don't believe in a hierarchy of victims, I do have more sense of loss for some more than others as is my and every other persons prerogative. I'm perfectly happy for Kofi to mourn the loss of Paisley, it doesn't make Kofi any the less in my eyes though clearly some appear to believe to the contrary.

In the words of Victor Bonham Carter:

Life is so short and death so certain and when death comes the separation is so final that we can never make too much of the ties and affections that bind us to the living.

My mother wrote that on a small card which she taped up in her kitchen, I've got it still and it means a lot to me, in many ways it's my faith.

Look after your own "ties" and don't interfere in other people's, least of all, of their dead "ties". I don't always achieve that of course, for even I am not perfect, but it's not a bad aim.

[Shan]

Indeed Baggy. Whether good, bad or other we all have family or friends who would miss us when we are gone.

Though that being said there are some folk we could have done without in our world. Still we don't get to control that, thankfully.

[Kofi Annan]

God to see some posters playing to their audience,

[Cap'n Grumpy]

God to see some posters playing to their audience,

He would do - He sees everything!

[BaggyTrousers]

God to see some posters playing to their audience,

Your non-existent invisible friend would be welcome to see me............ except, he can't....................obviously.

[rumncoke]

If you haven't got a God why have you got a conscience?


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[rumncoke]

Of course the problems start when your God deprives you of your consience


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[BaggyTrousers]

If you haven't got a God why have you got a conscience?


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Rum'n that has to be the most stupid and the most insulting question I can ever recall being asked. Quite an achievement of bumbling stupidity.